


Sleep Number

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2017 [16]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 13:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9551867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the Mystery fic_promptly prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, any, who is solving McKay's equations without leaving any evidence?"Tag to the Season 4 ep Doppelganger. Someone's solving Rodney's equations, and he's determined to find out who. Spoiler: it's not John.





	

The first time, Rodney was outraged when he stepped into the lab and someone else's handwriting was on his whiteboard. Someone else had touched his markers and messed up his equations - only they weren't messed up. They were corrected. Completed. In perfectly neat print, unlike Rodney's scrawl (all growing up, people had told him with his handwriting he'd be a doctor; they'd been both right and wrong).  
  
Whoever had solved the equation had done so with a touch of brilliance. Rodney took a picture for posterity, and also to preserve the handwriting, so he could figure out who it was. He ruled out Zelenka, because Zelenka was competitive, and there was no way he'd let someone else take credit for his genius. Kusanagi had a sly sense of humor, but she had very curly, girly cursive. Rodney had seen her dot her i's with hearts before.   
  
Granted, a smart person - and whoever had solved the equations was smart - would have disguised their handwriting.  
  
Rodney knew he could check the security feeds, but instead he erased the whiteboard and rewrote the formulas, corrections and solutions and all, in his own handwriting, and waited for someone to rise to the bait. To protest.   
  
When he showed Sam his work, she was pleased at his brilliance. That ruled her out, the way she exclaimed over the unconventional angle of the solution, how it side-stepped the problem of power-absorption depleting the energizing process by starting at power-absorption and working backward.   
  
Rodney had resigned himself to not knowing - or perhaps asking John about his soldiers. John was brilliant at math but didn't find physics particularly interesting, and he was a bit of a show pony, able to do wildly difficult calculations off the top of his head but not particularly interested in math for math's sake. Given that John was bizarrely good at math and the SGC seemed to take odd ducks, there was a good chance one of the Marines who seemed meat-headed was secretly good at math, right?   
  
Wrong. Even the ones like Laura Cadman, who had science degrees, didn't do the type of math Rodney did for fun. And none of the other scientists had come clean, so -  
  
Rodney set out to catch the mysterious mathematician. He started leaving fiendishly difficult equations on his whiteboard (once he got over someone other than him using his whiteboard and his markers) and waiting around to see who solved them. Sometimes they were solved while his back was turned, sometimes it took a few days. Always the same very neat handwriting. Always the same odd but brilliant approach.   
  
Rodney knew he could use the security feed to find out who it was, but he liked the mystery, so he started staking out the lab at odd hours, drinking copious amounts of coffee and studying the people around him. He asked random Marines difficult math questions, but most of them shrugged and couldn't answer - or didn't care to answer - and carried on with their duties.  
  
After about a month of playing this game, Rodney gave up and stopped using his valuable whiteboard space as bait and returned to using it for saving the galaxy and changing science as it was known back on Earth.  
  
He fell asleep in front of his laptop while it was crunching mass amounts of ZPM data for a simulation on a possible refueling option one night and came awake when he heard footsteps.  
  
"Wha...?" He blinked, confused.  
  
Major Lorne was standing in front of Rodney's whiteboard, marker in hand, studying the equations thoughtfully.  
  
Rodney shook his head to clear away the sleep cobwebs. "You!"  
  
"Hey, Doc," Lorne said placidly.  
  
"You - you're the one who's been touching my markers?" Rodney scrambled to his feet, hurried to Lorne's side.  
  
"Sorry, Doc. Need 'em." Lorne didn't look at him, instead was focused on the whiteboard.  
  
"If you can work this out, you're welcome to them," Rodney said. "But since when are you capable of this level of math? You - you're an artist in your spare time."  
  
"I am an artist," Lorne agreed.  
  
Rodney frowned. There was something in his tone that was - off.  
  
Three Marines - Lorne's teammates - came skittering into the lab.  
  
"Oh, hell, McKay's here," the redheaded one said. Rodney couldn't remember his name and referred to him as Mister Strawberry Shortcake in conversations with John.  
  
"You knew about this?" Rodney demanded.  
  
Captain Nondescript - brown hair, brown eyes, average height, forgotten as soon as Rodney looked away - sighed. "He's sleepwalking, Doc."  
  
"Sleepwalking?"  
  
"Ever since that whole crystal thing," said Sergeant Teenager (he looked like he'd never shaved a day in his life).  
  
Rodney stared at the way Lorne was printing neat numbers and variables on the whiteboard. "You mean he can literally do this type of math in his sleep?"  
  
"He can only do this type of math in his sleep." Mister Strawberry Shortcake sighed.   
  
Rodney reached out to shake Lorne awake, but Sergeant Teenager swatted his hand away.  
  
"No, you can't wake him up. All you can do is let him do his math, and then with a bit of suggestion he'll go back to bed."  
  
Rodney's hand stung, but he bit back several curses. "He's your team leader, isn't he? Shouldn't he be in charge of you?"  
  
Captain Nondescript drew himself up to his full height. "When he's like this, it's our job to take care of him."  
  
"Fine." Rodney reached for his mug of coffee. Its contents were cold, but he swallowed some down anyway. "Are you sure he's not capable of this when he's awake?"  
  
Sergeant Teenager nodded earnestly. "Yeah. I mean, he's okay at arithmetic and stuff, but this is beyond even him, and he got his masters in geophysics."  
  
"His what?" Rodney echoed.  
  
"Masters," Sergeant Teenager said. "Need it to make major, or its equivalent."  
  
Rodney raised his eyebrows. "Really?"  
  
Captain Nondescript nodded.  
  
What John gotten his masters in?  
  
"If he can't do this while he's awake," Rodney said, "are you sure it's him? And not some alien entity? If this has only been happening since the crystal entity overtook him -"  
  
"Doc Keller checked him out," Mister Strawberry Shortcake said. "He's fine. He's better than fine, actually. Since when he's unconscious he can do - this."  
  
"Can he do anything else? While he's like this?"  
  
Sergeant Teenager scowled at him. "He's not a performing monkey. He finds sleepwalking very distressing and embarrassing, and we do our best to protect him."  
  
Rodney raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Sorry. Just - look at that math. I don't think you understand, but -"  
  
"I'm getting my masters in combinatorial optimization," Sergeant Teenager said sourly, and Rodney quickly revised him to Captain Teenager. "Look, Doc, we got this under control. Go back to whatever it was you were doing, and we'll make sure he gets back to bed."  
  
Rodney glanced at his laptop. The data for the simulation was still compiling. "What about you?" He lifted his chin at Captain Nondescript. "What are you studying?"  
  
"Engineering," he said.   
  
Rodney narrowed his eyes at Mister Strawberry Shortcake. "And you?"  
  
"Astronomy."  
  
"Is every single soldier on this base a secret scientist?" Rodney thought of Ford, who'd always despaired of games of Prime Not Prime and acted like his watching over scientists was cosmic revenge of the nerds.  
  
"Not every one," Captain Nondescript said. He shared an amused look with his teammates and said, "We like to meet people's expectations of us is all."  
  
Play dumb, he meant. Like John often did.  
  
There was a snapping sound, and they all turned. Lorne capped the marker he'd been using and put it back in its place.  
  
Captain Teenager sidled toward him. "Hey, Major. Time for you to go to bed. Come on." He put a gentle hand on Lorne's shoulder, nudged him toward the door.  
  
Lorne nodded. His eyes were open and he was walking in a perfectly steady manner, but his expression was disturbingly blank, slack.  
  
"Bed. Bed sounds good."  
  
"It sounds awesome," Mister Strawberry Shortcake said. "C'mon. This way."  
  
Rodney watched the three Marines herd Lorne to the door, voices soft and coaxing, like Lorne was some kind of clumsy puppy. And then he realized. The crystal thingie was making Lorne sleepwalk, even though it was supposedly gone.  
  
What was it making Rodney do?


End file.
